Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
and on the other hand there are the non-exclusive permissions that are granted to
other persons. In order to be able to correctly preserve all the existing rights - exclu-
sive ownership rights and non-exclusive permissions - the following information is
required:
•
Ownership of rights
•
Licences
•
Rights-relevant Provenance information
•
Post-publication events
•
Laws
Each of these is discussed in turn below.
10.6.2.1 Ownership of Rights
Ownership rights can be derived from the application of the Law to provenance and
to post-publication events. Thus one could just preserve the latter and “calculate” the
existing rights only when the legitimacy of some intended action must be controlled.
In practice however it is useful to have the ownership rights already processed
and stored in explicit form, for instance for statistical purposes and for searching
and browsing the preserved material. This requires that adequate mechanisms are
put in place for notification about changes in the Law and on some other relevant
events in the history of a work, because these could imply some change in the status
of rights.
10.6.2.2 Licenses
When a right holder is willing to grant some specific permission to other people to
exploit his/her creation, (s)he can do this through a licence. Licences contain the
terms and conditions under which the use of the creation is permitted.
Preserving licences over time gives the future consumer a better chance to exploit
an intellectual work.
10.6.2.3 Rights-Relevant Provenance Information
This information includes the main source of information from which the exist-
ing exclusive rights can be derived by applying the Law. In the simplest case
it corresponds to the creation history, saying who the creators are, when and in
which country the creation was made public for the first time, and the particular
contribution of each creator.
However, the continuously changing legislation poses a challenging issue,
namely that it is impossible to predict which information might be relevant.
Consider for example that France has, at a certain point, extended the Copyright
duration with provision of five and nine years respectively for works created in the
years of the First and the Second World War, and it has added further 30 years if
